


Roll the Bones

by blackmare_9 (blackmare), Nightdog_Barks, pwcorgigirl



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Drama, Drunkenness, Family Drama, Friendship, Gen, Hope, Hostage Situation, Injury, Medical, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 07:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmare/pseuds/blackmare_9, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pwcorgigirl/pseuds/pwcorgigirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desperate times call for desperate measures, and a gamble's the only game left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Roll the Bones  
 **Authors:** [](http://pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com/profile)[**pwcorgigirl**](http://pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com/) , [](http://blackmare-9.livejournal.com/profile)[**blackmare_9**](http://blackmare-9.livejournal.com/) , and [](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/profile)[**nightdog_barks**](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/)  
 **Characters:** House, Wilson, OMC, OFC.  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Warnings:** None.  
 **Spoilers:** Yes, in a very general sense for Season 6.  
 **Summary:** Desperate times call for desperate measures, and a gamble's the only game left.  
 **Disclaimer:** Don't own 'em. Never will.  
 **Author Notes:** This fic is in three parts; each chapter contains a link to the next. The entire story is 12,852 words. LJ-cut text is from [Learning to Fly](http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/tom+petty/learning+to+fly_20138495.html), by Tom Petty.  
 **Beta:** Our intrepid First Readers, with especial thanks to [](http://topaz-eyes.livejournal.com/profile)[**topaz_eyes**](http://topaz-eyes.livejournal.com/) and [](http://daasgrrl.livejournal.com/profile)[**daasgrrl**](http://daasgrrl.livejournal.com/).

  
 **Roll the Bones**

  
 _  
**Part One**   
_

  
The only reason why Colt had the gun with him when he headed out to the Quik Stop was he'd been cleaning it and didn't have time to put it away so the kids wouldn't find it.

Well, that was what he was telling himself.

The truth was he was considering holding up the route man who emptied the rank of dusty soda pop machines outside the store. The money would all be small change and dollar bills, but it'd buy another bottle of oxy from that guy who'd set up shop in the parking lot of the Urgent Care.

So he'd stuck Daddy's old Navy pistol, the one he got from _his_ Daddy, who didn't turn in the paperwork to give the gun back when his enlistment ended, into the pocket of his jeans and let the tail of his shirt fall over the gun's butt.

He wouldn't be contemplating crime and needing more pain killers if he hadn't wrecked his Hyster forklift at the paper mill back in the spring. If the damned workman's comp doctor would sign off on the paper stating that he, Colt Locklear, had a permanent disabling back injury from the wreck, then he'd be set, could get himself some medical treatment and his medication on Medicaid. But _no_. Dr. Smartypants didn't give a damn about the working man.

So what if he and Rayburn Phillips had been in a little fender-bender the night before and he'd had a couple of shots of bourbon to ease the muscle spasms in his shoulders before he went on shift? It was _medicinal_. He wasn't drinking on the job, no way, no how.

Lorna was in her usual spot on the sofa, a cigarette tucked in the corner of her mouth while she changed the baby's diaper. As usual, Dale had blasted clean out of the confines of her Pampers.

“What you been feeding her? Smells like a septic field overflowed,” Colt said as he fished for his car keys in the junk on the end table. Judge Judy was hurting his ears, harping away on the TV like the screeching old biddy she was. Damn, but those Yankee women had ugly voices.

“I'm on my last nerve today, Colt, so give it a rest.”

“Be glad to. I'm going out for a while.”

"Then bring back some diapers and Midol. And get me some cigarettes, but not that Basic shit."

"They're cheaper."

"Yeah, and they just about give me catarrh. You better come home with Newports this time."

Colt glowered at his wife but it had absolutely no effect. No surprise; it never did, so he compensated by muttering _you better come home with Newports this time_ in a squeaky falsetto as he went out the door, but pitched low enough so Lorna didn't hear him.

Outside the sun was shining. It was already heating up, and all four window units on the trailer were running.

 _Running up the 'lectric bill_ , Colt thought. He frowned at the faithful old Chevy sitting in the red-dirt driveway, baking in the sun. A few feet away from the car, a pit bull lay in a sprawled heap, freckled belly exposed to the warming light.

"Hey, Bobo," Colt said, but the dog didn't stir, and after a moment Colt sighed and reached for the car door. _"Ow!"_

He yanked his hand back and blew on his fingers. He glowered at the Chevy, but that had about as much effect as it had on Lorna, so he ended up wrapping his shirt tail around the handle in order to wrench the door open.

Inside, the vinyl seats were melting-hot, but the old bath towel he used as a blast shield was only heating-pad hot, about the same toasty temperature that Lorna preferred when she was having her monthlies. He stuck the key in the ignition, and the Chevy coughed to life. Colt rolled down the window.

"Keep an eye on things, Bobo," he shouted to the dog. The pit bull slept on.

"Okay, yeah," Colt mumbled. The revolver was gouging into his groin, so he shifted in his seat and eased it up a little. He started to back out of the yard, angling around to keep from knocking over the hummingbird-feeder stand his wife had put up. The heat from the sun-blistered seat soaked into his back, loosening the kinks and soothing away the pain.

Once on the road he stepped on the gas. If he didn't get going, he'd miss the soda pop man.

* * *

"Pull in here," House said.

"What?" Wilson said. "There? Why?"

 _"Bzzzzt!"_ House said. "Too many questions. Pull in, it's an emergency."

Wilson glanced over. House didn't _appear_ to be in any pain, which could mean ... anything.

He flicked on the turn signal and pulled in.

The Quik Stop was pretty much like every other Quik Stop they'd passed on their way to Florida, only more so. This one hadn't just seen better days -- it had seen better _decades_. Instead of painted grey cinderblocks, it was constructed of weathered red wood that was sagging in some places and bowed out in others. It looked like something that might have spawned Jed Clampett's shack, but after a moment Wilson decided maybe it had been a general store once, converted to a convenience trap at this intersection of Nothing and Nowhere. Neon-script signs in the windows advertised live bait, hot coffee, and Jax beer. The air smelled of pine trees, hot asphalt, and that distinctively fragrant undernote of roadkill.

The passenger door of the Volvo slammed, startling Wilson out of his olfactory analysis. House was throwing his shoulders back, stretching his muscles.

"So?" Wilson asked.

House breathed in. His nose wrinkled.

"So, what?" he said.

Wilson rolled his eyes. "So, what's the _emergency?_ "

"Oh," House said. He used his cane to point at the biggest, swirliest neon sign. It showed a bright orange peach, with green hundred-dollar bills replacing the leaves on the stem. The script letters above the peach read _GET GA-LUCKY! IS TODAY YOUR LUCKY DAY?_

Wilson stared at the sign.

"You wanted a ... _lottery ticket?_ House!"

"It could happen!" House said. "It could!" He adopted a look he probably thought was contemplative. "And if it does," he said, "I'll split it with you -- seventy-thirty."

"Is that really fair? Considering I'm the one driving?"

"Okay," House grumbled. "Sixty-forty. It'll be enough to pay your medical malpractice for a year."

"Your generosity knows no bounds," Wilson said dryly. "And you know the hospital pays the malpractice insurance."

"Details," House said. "I knew you'd see it my way. Come on. I'll let you buy me some road food." He waved at the _LIVE BAIT!_ sign. "See? Sushi and Slim Jims, coming right up."

Wilson shook his head.

"You go ahead. I need to use the men's room."

Neither of them paid any attention to the delivery guy nearby, working to open up the big, hulking block of the soft drink machine, or the man next to him, who'd just emerged from a dusty Chevy Caprice with a red and black _#3_ decal on the back window. He'd been listening closely, and as he'd listened, a thoughtful expression had come over his face.

* * *

"You want a cold drink, son?"

Colt just about jumped out of his skin at being addressed directly by the man he was fixing to rob.

"It's gonna take me just a minute," the man continued placidly. He wasn't even looking at Colt -- he was busy running one hand over the pop machine's front panels like it was some beloved pet he was gonna have to put down. "Some fool went and stuck gum over the locks on ever-one of these machines. Gotta get the WD-40 from the truck, spray 'er good and let it soften that mess up."

Colt tried not to touch the pistol under his shirt tail, tried not to shift from one foot to the other.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. After all, times being what they was, how many folks were dropping 75 cents in the slot for a Coke when the Quik Stop sold Faygo Colas for 33 cents a piece inside? He had a sudden picture of himself standing before Judge Pope in an orange jumpsuit and hearing some court-appointed lawyer talking about the piddling amount of change he'd stolen.

 _There's gotta be a better way_ , he thought, and then he heard the word "malpractice" come from the two men beside that silver car with New Jersey plates.

* * *

It had been a long time since Wilson had used a restroom that required a key -- especially a gold-tone metal key, attached by a length of twine to a clunky wooden plaque, varnished to a smooth-grained sheen and labeled _MEN'S_ in purple block letters. Both restrooms ( _MEN'S_ and _GIRL'S_ ) were outside the main store, on the side of the ell facing the parking lot.

Wilson washed his hands a second time and looked around. Somewhat to his surprise, the men's room had been scrupulously clean. A polished slab of knotty pine hung at eye level above the toilet tank; an artful example of wood-burning, it sported the finely-charred outline of a prize stag, with the legend _Young bucks with short horns, stand close!_

He jacked a couple of sheets of soft brown paper out of the roller and stepped back, brushing into place a few unruly strands of hair. He wiped his hands and tossed the balled-up paper into the trash can, then slid back the chain-lock, opened the door, and started out into the bright sunlight. A shadow moved behind him, and something hard and unforgiving pressed into the small of his back. Wilson froze.

"Doc?" a voice breathed in his ear. "You and me got somethin' to talk about."

* * *

House came out of the Quik Stop feeling vaguely disappointed. It wasn't as much fun when Wilson wasn't there, although it _had_ been fun seeing Wilson blush when he'd asked the Jethro behind the counter for the key to the men's room. He started into the parking lot, sucking enthusiastically on the plastic straw sticking out of a Super-Goliath-size RC Cola, then stopped.

The silver Volvo was gone.

House turned around and looked behind him, then squinted into the parking lot again.

"Wilson?" he said.

  
[Part Two](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/1326797.html)


	2. Chapter 2

_  
**Fic: Roll the Bones (Part Two)**   
_   


_  
**Part Two**   
_

  
"This sure is a nice car," his kidnapper said. There was a wistful tone to his voice; Wilson risked a glance over at him, then looked quickly back at the road.

"Thank you," he said. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. Was he supposed to say something else? _"Please don't kill me,"_ maybe? What if that wasn't the right thing to say? What _was_ the right thing to say during a kidnapping?

"I can hear you thinkin' from over here," his kidnapper grumbled, except in his broad accent it came out _Ah kin hear yew thinkin' from ovah here._.

 _Oh my God_ , Wilson thought. _I've been abducted at gunpoint by Tom Petty._

"Drive," his kidnapper ordered. That motherfucking big horse pistol he was carrying poked Wilson in the ribs. "Just drive."

So Wilson drove, farther and farther away from I-75, on to 94 and 221, deeper into back country with cornfields and endless onion rows that wafted their scent in through the Volvo's AC. He kept driving, through vistas of more red dirt and cows that didn't look up from their foraging, until at last the gun in his ribs urged him to turn onto a narrow, rutted cattle-path that advertised itself as County Road Number 8.

And at the end of County Road Number 8, after several _more_ miles of shuddering, bone-rattling jolts and his kidnapper's grunted curses, past the handpainted U-PICK-EM signs advertising PEACHES and PECAN'S and BLACK-EYED PEA'S, was a double-wide trailer that, like the Quik Stop, had seen better days. At the sound of the strange car rolling to a stop, the ugly pit bull in the front yard leapt forward, straining at the end of its chain and barking frantically. Wilson's kidnapper leaned across the center console and yanked the keys from the ignition. He grunted a little as he did so, and Wilson recognized the sound immediately -- it was the same kind of small noise House made sometimes when he was in pain and not wanting to show it.

"Now," the man said. "You and me are gonna exit this nice car at the same time, real slow."

Wilson swallowed. The muzzle of that damn gun seemed to take up his entire field of vision; it blotted out everything else, including that crazy dog jumping in circles and snapping at the air.

"No sudden moves," his kidnapper said. His voice was eerily calm. "I got no problem with shooting you in the back iff'n you try and run." The pistol barrel jerked once -- an unmistakable order, meant to be obeyed.

"Out. Now."

* * *

The trailer had that lived-in smell -- a curious mix of cheap carpeting, laundry detergent, and stale spit-up. Old cooking grease and fresh cigarette smoke only served to enhance the ambiance. It was the kind of place where you could stand in the living room, and, just by looking right and left, take in the whole layout of the trailer.

There was a dog bed in the corner, but no dog. Wilson wondered if it was for the vicious pit bull outside, or if there had been another dog once, and either the Pettys or the pit bull had eaten it. A set of bunk beds that had been new once were crammed into a tiny bedroom, and there was a crib with Elmos printed on the sheet at the foot of the double bed in the trailer's slightly larger master bedroom. In the living room, a black, well-worn Barcalounger dominated the landscape. There was a gas fireplace against the far wall, and on the mantel, two framed pictures. One of them was Oprah Winfrey, and beside her was some NASCAR driver, a "3" on his chest and his arms raised as if imploring Heaven for a miracle. Both photos were framed in cheap dime store plastic, smiling down on the household. In the corner, a small flat-screen TV with the sound turned down was showing _One Life to Live_ ; against another wall was a sagging leather sofa, except it wasn't really leather. There was a tired-looking woman with dark hair sitting there, holding a sleeping baby.

 _Help!_ Wilson thought, and he was just about to open his mouth and ask her to call 911 when she spoke.

"Lord, Colt," the woman said. "Who the hell have you brought home _now?_ "

His kidnapper -- _Colt_ \-- draped his free arm over Wilson's shoulders like they were old buddies. Wilson could feel cool air through his shirt as the tail of his sport coat rode up a little, draped over the gun held to his ribs.

"Lorna, baby, send the kids over to MeMaw's. This fellah's a doctor -- met him at the Quik Stop -- and he's agreed to look at my back."

Wilson felt as if he'd fallen down a rabbit hole.

"Your ... what? Wait a minute -- " he began.

Colt's fingers dug painfully into Wilson's shoulder.

"My back," he repeated. "Like I was telling you about? The car accident, and then there was the forklift at the plant, the be-damned Hyster with the crapped-out hydraulics -- "

"Hon," Lorna said. She looked at them both from her spot on the sagging Naugahyde couch. "Did you bring my cigarettes? And I can't send the kids over there -- she's got pus running out her ears."

"Well, they ain't going near her _ears_ , Lorna. Send 'em over there. 'Sides, she's got the diaper bag."

"You forgot the diapers too? Colt, you are a sorry sack of shit."

Wilson couldn't help but wince, but Colt didn't even seem to hear her, as if the venom had long ago gone out of her insults.

A door slammed, somewhere from the back of the trailer. Two small heads peeked into the living room.

"Mama?" the little boy said.

The woman (Lorna, Wilson reminded himself) looked up.

"Travis, Britney," she said. "You kids come in here. I want y'all to go over to MeMaw's house, play there for a little while."

The kids came into the room slowly, eying Wilson as they might an unusual and possibly dangerous animal that had suddenly appeared in the trailer. They were both towheads like their father; the boy kept hold of his sister's hand as she sucked her thumb.

"MeMaw smells funny," the boy announced.

Lorna sighed. "It'll just be for a while, not overnight. Now you help me get your little sister in the carrier."

Wilson watched as the two children went silently about their business, packing the baby into the hard plastic holder. They had just finished tucking a pink blanket around her shoulders when Colt apparently decided he'd wasted enough time. Wilson hissed in a breath as the gun ground into his side and Colt's arm tightened around his shoulders.

"Now then," Colt said. He pulled Wilson closer, so that his forearm was across Wilson's throat. "Let's you and me go into the bedroom, so's you can _examine my back_." He turned, forcing Wilson to turn with him, and the two men marched into the bedroom, leaving Lorna and the kids behind.

* * *

House glared at the grimy black phone receiver as if it were somehow the real perpetrator of Wilson's mysterious disappearance, which was at least somewhat true because he hadn't been able to get a call to go through on his mobile.

“This is a dead zone, Mister. Like on the TV?” the old man behind the counter of the Quik Stop said during a commercial break for _The Guiding Light_. What had to be the world's oldest black and white Zenith portable set was perched in a sea of dusty papers and junk on a shelf behind the cash register. “You can use the store phone. Quarter apiece for local calls.”

House slapped a quarter on the counter and dialed 911.

“Brooks County E-911. What's the nature of your emergency?” a woman's voice drawled.

“Missing person,” House said.

“And your name, sir?”

“Greg House.”

“And how long has your child been missing, Mr. House?”

“He's an adult, supposedly, and he left me at this gas station in the middle of Nowheresville about a half-hour ago.”

“Center point between Pavo and Morven,” the old man supplied helpfully, not taking his eyes off a commercial for NuvaRing birth control.

“Was your friend sick or mentally ill? Is there some reason why he might have wandered off?”

“Does thinking he's Florence Nightingale and enough bad marriages to make three of a kind count? Because if it does, he's definitely sick. Otherwise, no. And he didn't wander off. He took the car and left.”

A note of frost crept into the woman's drawl. “Sir, it is illegal to make fallacious reports to 911.”

“This is a real report of a real missing person. His name is Dr. James Wilson. He's forty years old, from Princeton, New Jersey. We were on our way to a medical conference in Florida. We got off the interstate, stopped here to take a break, and when I came out of the store he and the car were gone.”

“I see,” the operator said skeptically.

“No, you _don't_. Wilson's more reliable than a Swiss watch. There's no way he'd do this.”

“And exactly how long had he been in the vehicle with you, Mr. House?”

House heard the bell over the store's door jingle behind him and half turned. The big man who'd been outside stocking the soft drink machines was at the counter with a clipboard for the old cashier to sign.

“It's _Doctor_ House. So can we skip all that sir and mister crap and stick to what's important: he's driving a silver 2006 Volvo S60 ... ”

“Now you listen to this, mister. You watch your mouth ... ”

“If your IQ was higher than room temperature, you'd know that's an anatomical impossibility. Write this down: New Jersey specialty license plate reads 'Conquer Cancer' ... ”

“Hold for a supervisor, _sir_ ,” the operator snapped. Within seconds – which meant the guy had to have been standing next to the operator -– a man with a deep baritone voice was on the line.

“Doctor House, this is how we do things here. We don't take too kindly to Yankee visitors insulting us and then telling us how to do our jobs. I see here you're calling from the Quik Stop on Glass Lake Road. How about we send a patrol officer to check out your story? Or you could just behave yourself for a few minutes and see if your friend turns up. It's your call.”

The last time he'd been in a Southern police station hadn't been the least bit fun. “That won't be necessary,” House said and hung up the phone.

“Your friend in the Volvo went off with a young guy. Had kinda long blond hair, you know?" The route man made a vague motion between his ear and shoulder to indicate hair length.

The cashier glanced out the window. "That's Colt Locklear's old Chevy,” he said. “I reckon it wouldn't start again."

"Could'a been." The route man looked at House. "He kept hanging around like he was going to ask me somethin', and then he went over and started talking to your friend.”

"I reckon he's just givin' Colt a ride home," the cashier said.

"And where does this _Colt Locklear_ live?" House asked. "Ten minutes away? Twenty?"

The route man and the old cashier looked at each other.

"Well," the cashier began, only in his accent it came out more like _"Whale"_ \-- "Whale, I b'lieve Colt lives over to near Pavo, out by Uncle Jack Kirby's people." He glanced at the TV again, but another commercial was on and he looked back at House.

"Can I get a ride out there?" House asked.

The route man shook his head and took back his clipboard from the cashier. "Against company policy."

House looked at the cashier, who was running his thumbnail between his front teeth in lieu of using a toothpick.

"I'm on duty 'til midnight. Ain't got no car anyway. My cousin give me a ride in today."

"What about a taxi service, anything?"

The cashier looked thoughtfully at the end of his thumb and flicked a dislodged food particle away. "Nope. And you don't look to be in any shape to walk that far, so you're just gonna have to wait."

"You come from a long line of cousins, don't you?" House said, but the words rolled right off the cashier's back.

"Now looky here," he said, and nodded at the short row of customer chairs by the front door. With their scratched and battered frames and what appeared to be tufts of coarse horsehair sticking up from the faded upholstery, they resembled nothing so much as forgotten relics from a student production of _Gone With the Wind_.

"You can have a comfortable seat right there," the old cashier said. "You and me, we'll watch the television for a spell, and before you know it, your friend'll be back."

 _Yeah, if your ridge-runner boy Colt hasn't fed him to the pigs yet_ , House thought.

As if sensing his doubt, the cashier shook his head.

"Colt Forty-five Locklear ain't never hurt a fly, less'n that fly deserved it," he said.

"Go ahead, Mister, sit down," the route man urged.

House sat.

 _Colt Forty-five_ , he thought. _He_ did _feed him to the pigs._

* * *

"Sit down," Colt said to Wilson, who looked around the cramped bedroom and saw nowhere to do that except on the unmade bed. The night table was scarred with long, dark cigarette burns. The faces of Anderson Cooper and Sidney Poitier looked out from the covers of books piled on the floor beside it.

Colt jabbed him hard in the back with the barrel of the pistol. "I said SIT!"

Wilson sat. The bed gave easily under his weight, and he looked out the dusty window -- anything to keep his mind off that big shiny pistol that Colt was holding only a foot from his face. Outside, his kidnapper's two older children were walking across the weedy back yard. The little girl, who couldn't have been more than six, let the baby's carrier bang against her legs with every step. He winced inwardly at the thought of the baby's head jolting repeatedly, but maybe these children had to be tough. The little boy was trailing behind, stopping every few feet to pick up sticks and fling them away.

They were headed toward an even older and more dilapidated trailer near the edge of the woods. Between it and a massive, rusting satellite dish, Wilson could glimpse the dull shine of an ancient Airstream -- _the three ages of mobile homes_ , he thought, and the grim humor of the observation almost startled him. A few climbing roses were struggling along a stand-alone trellis, and next to a lilac bush, he spotted the front of an old Pontiac Bonneville. Its distinctively off-centered front license frame bore a custom plate, one of those cheap plaques from a noisy mall store with a glittery disco ball and equally glittery patrons, and if Wilson squinted he could just make out the lettering: _SEXY BINGO BABY_.

"Let's get down to bidness," Colt said, and Wilson felt the first trickle of cold sweat between his shoulder blades.

 _Make him think about something else_ , the warning voice in Wilson's head whispered. "Your kids are leaving," he said.

"Going to their grandma's," Colt said, and Wilson heard a small note of pride under the grudging explanation.

He looked away from the window. On the paneled wall behind Colt were a framed certificate for Employee of the Month at the Tecumseh Paper Products Mill and Lorna's high school diploma. A blue seal in the corner attested that she'd had perfect attendance for three years.

"Now then," Colt said. He took a step back.

Wilson's breath stuck in his throat, and his stomach did a slow, nauseating flip-flop.

"Don't," he said, his voice rusty and halting. "Please don't -- "

But instead of ending Wilson's life then and there with one well-placed bullet, Colt was holding out a plain brown folder.

"Need your signature," he said gruffly. "First page on the top."

Wilson stared at the folder.

"Page ... " His moment of mindless terror was fading, but not quickly enough.

"For my disability claim," Colt said patiently. "Look, you're a doctor, right?"

"Yes," Wilson said. His thoughts felt sluggish, as if they were moving through a thick, viscous solution. Colt seemed to sense his difficulty.

"We got started off on the wrong foot," he admitted, "but desperate times call for desperate measures. What's your name?"

"Wilson," Wilson said. "James Wilson."

"What kind of doctor are you?"

"An oncologist. I take care of people with cancer."

"Okay then. I just need you to sign my paper." He held out the brown folder again.

Wilson looked down. He took the folder and flipped it open, and for the first time read his kidnapper's full name.

 _Colt Forty-five Locklear_ , he marveled. _I really am in a different country._

He shook off the thought, and read more, and as he read, his confidence and bearings returned.

"It's not that simple," he said. "There's a section here for your diagnosis and then you have to attach copies of your tests and x-rays."

Colt slowly cocked the pistol's hammer. "Cancer's real painful, doc. So's what I got. I'm taking grocery money and buying drugs off the street now, all because nobody believes I'm hurting. Your job is to make 'em believe me. Now get to it."

Wilson looked at the medical form again.

"Mister Locklear ... Colt ... I can't just -- "

"Yes," Colt said. "You can."

Wilson forced himself to look away from the gun, to examine Colt instead. He noted the dilated pupils, the lines of pain pulling down the corners of the other man's mouth.

"All right," he said. “I have to look at and touch your back. It's going to be hard for me to do that with you pointing that gun in my face.”

Colt uncocked the pistol and laid it slowly on top of the dresser. “What you want me to do?”

“Take your shirt off and turn around,” Wilson said.

Colt unbuttoned his shirt and then grimaced as he shrugged the shirt off his shoulders.

Wilson rubbed his hands on the legs of his trousers. His palms were damp and clammy. If he'd been at the hospital, he would have washed his hands in warm water first, but that wasn't happening here.

“Okay, I'm going to stand up and walk to you. Turn just a little so I can examine your back.”

Colt turned halfway and laid his hand on the pistol.

“You're going to have to trust me,” Wilson said. “I'm trusting you not to shoot me. So trust me to treat you right.”

The man's shoulders dropped as he moved his hand to his side. “Okay,” he said, his voice low.

“I'm starting with your neck and I'm going to touch the area around each of your vertebrae. Those are the bones that make up your neck and spine.”

The whole experience was reminding Wilson of the first time he'd had to coach a teenage patient through a breast exam, except that this was no scared girl and the examination wouldn't have ended with gunfire.

The muscles around the spine were all tight, and Wilson closed his eyes to better visualize the architecture of bone that lay under them. His fingers moved from the first cervical vertebra – the atlas – to the second, the axis on which the human head pivoted, and through the rest of the series of seven connected bones.

“Does your neck ever bother you?”

“Not much. Nothing like my back,” Colt said.

Wilson worked his way down the thoracic vertebrae. In his mind's eye, he could see the long spinous processes, the outcropping of bones that had reminded him in medical school of a wide-spread bird's foot.

At the twelfth thoracic vertebra, his fingers stopped. The outward curve of the vertebral body was flattened. He probed the surrounding muscles to find the knots and swelling of inflammation that he expected.

Colt flinched under his hands. “That's it,” he hissed.

“I know. Let me finish checking. It won't get any worse than that, okay?”

The first lumbar vertebra was in the same condition. He continued down to the waistband of Colt's baggy jeans and undershorts, the man's skin sweat-slick under his fingertips, but the rest of the vertebrae were undamaged.

“You have two fractured vertebrae,” Wilson said. “Put your shirt back on and we'll talk about it.”

“I can't bend to pick it up,” Colt said, his voice hushed and tight, and Wilson stooped and picked up the shirt and draped it over his shoulders.

“Much obliged,” Colt said.

“You're welcome,” Wilson replied, and he knew House would be laughing his ass off if he could hear him saying that to a man who'd been holding him at gunpoint for the last hour.

“I have a few questions. First, were you wearing a seat belt when you had the car accident?”

“Yeah,” Colt said. “Always do. My little girl nags me about it. She says, 'Click it or ticket, Daddy,' from the back seat every time.”

“And you were just really sore the next day. Shoulders maybe?”

“It threw me against the belt pretty hard, and then Rayburn over-corrected because he can't fucking drive worth a damn, and we slid across the road into the ditch. Tossed us both around pretty good, but I didn't have no bruises. Sore all over like I'd been beat, but my back was fine.”

“When you wrecked the forklift, were you thrown from the seat?”

“Went ass over teakettle,” Colt said. “I twisted on the way down so the damned thing wouldn't run over me and landed flat on my back on the cement floor. It knocked the wind out of me, but I thought I was okay until I went to stand up.”

“No one should have _let_ you get up. You broke your back when you landed. The fracture's tried to heal itself since then, but because you weren't treated, you now have a lot of inflammation in the muscles around your spine.”

“I knew it,” Colt said. “It hurts all the time, burning, tingling, like being stuck with a knife. When I get up in the morning, my legs just about go out from under me.” His face brightened. “But now you can sign my paper, 'cause you just done that examination.”

“I'm not licensed in this state, so my signature's not valid,” Wilson said. “If you let me go, I promise I will find a doctor who will treat you and get you the documentation you need. At the very least, you should qualify for temporary disability while you recover.”

Colt took a step toward him and the shirt fell from his shoulders. He had the pistol in his hand again. “That ain't good enough! I been from doctor to doctor -- everybody thinks it's my fault, that I'm a drunk or a fuckin' meth head! I need you to help me _now!_ ”

Wilson took two steps backward, but there was nowhere to go in the tiny room. “I _am_ helping you. Please, just put the gun down.”

There was a sound outside the bedroom door of the scrape of metal on metal, and then three-four-five quick footfalls and the door came open.

“I have had enough of this bullcrap,” Lorna said, and Colt, whether he was hindered by his broken back or the shirt around his feet, didn't turn around fast enough to avoid the cast iron skillet she held. She whipped it up and smacked him across the back of the head before Wilson could even blink.

There was a bang, louder than the loudest clap of thunder in the tiny room, followed by a lightning-like streak of pain down the calf of Wilson's left leg.

 _"OW!"_ Wilson yelped, and then the leg buckled beneath him and he went down, sprawling to the floor beside Colt, where he curled up, clutching at where someone had apparently stuck a red-hot poker against his gastrocnemius while he wasn't looking. The pain radiated up his sciatic nerve, pulsing up his groin and into his back.

 _I've been shot_ , he thought. _He fucking shot me._

He felt sick, like he might throw up, and he rolled, shaking, onto his side. He tasted acid in the back of his throat, but nothing from his stomach followed, and after a moment he raised a trembling hand to his face. He was soaked in a cold sweat.

 _Shock. I'm in ... shock. Because he ..._

The thought led to other thoughts he didn't really want to pursue right now, and so he concentrated on his surroundings. The trailer bedroom was quiet, the air seeming to still vibrate from the gunshot. There were no raised voices, no sirens drawing near, and Wilson realized the sound of gunfire must be a common occurrence out here in the boonies, because certainly there was no one paying it any mind. He twisted around a bit and looked up.

“Is he going to be okay?” The skillet was dangling from Lorna's hand, as if she couldn't decide whether to drop it or give her prostrate husband another swat to the head.

Wilson dropped his head; his leg was simply throbbing now instead of sending jagged spikes of agony up his spine, so he got carefully to his hands and knees and turned, crab-wise, in order to take a look at the man who'd shot him.

Wilson felt Colt's skull and neck. When he found everything intact, he rolled Colt over and pulled up each of his eyelids in turn. “He's just knocked out. He'll have a headache and a hell of a goose bump, but I don't think you did any permanent harm.”

“He shot you,” she said.

“It was an accident,” Wilson said. The big silver horse pistol was lying on the floor a few feet away. He didn't want to touch it.

He sat back, resting against the bed frame, and scrubbed at his face with both hands. He could smell himself, the rankness rising from his pores. He took a deep breath and looked at his leg.

The bullet had torn through his trousers, ripping open a ragged seam, and beneath that was the ugly furrow it had plowed into his calf. The flesh was red-scored and raw where the projectile had dug a path a couple of centimeters deep through skin and surface muscle. There was very little blood.

"If you're gonna be sick, tell me so's I can get a bucket," Lorna said.

"No," Wilson said. "I'm ... I'm okay." He tried to smile at her and thought maybe he succeeded.

"Do you think you can get my car keys from ... your husband's pocket? There's a first-aid bag in my trunk. I think I could use it right about now."

* * *

She came back with not only his neatly-buckled medical bag, but also a child's frayed jump rope, blue and red strands woven together to form a sturdy, flexible length of cord.

“Accident or no," she said grimly, "he's going to be madder than a hornet when he wakes up. We'd best tie him down so he don't hurt nobody.”

Wilson stared at her, but she appeared to be perfectly serious, and after a moment he bent to help.

"You didn't miss a day of high school for three years,” Wilson said as he looped the dirty jump rope around Colt's wrists.

“I was dating him. His family didn't have a phone, so it was the only way I could see him. Now that's worked out real good.”

Wilson tied the rope in a double square knot and threaded the loose end through the footboard of the bed. “He has a legitimate injury.”

“Company doctor said it was because he'd been drinking on the job.”

“Was he?”

“No. He'd never do that. He was all stove-up from that fender-bender in Rayburn's car the night before, but he wrecked the Hyster because the company hadn't done maintenance on it, not 'cause he was drunk. He had two shots with his coffee at 6 that morning and didn't start his shift until 8.”

"And nothing else after that. That you know of."

Lorna shook her head. She swiped at her nose with the back of her right hand.

"Colt doesn't drink on the job 'cause that's how his daddy died. Mean old snake used to beat his own damn kids with a broken fan belt offa the Buick.” She leaned forward and brushed a lock of her husband's hair off his still face with unmistakable tenderness. “How Colt turned out as good as he did, and don't hit nobody unless he's fightin' 'em -- I just don't know."

Wilson got off the floor and sat on the bed with his injured leg stretched out. The bullet graze was beginning to throb steadily, and he had no doubt things would start to feel worse by the minute. He pulled the trouser leg up past the wound.

“It's not bleeding much,” Lorna said. Her hands were clutched in front of her.

“I'll be fine,” Wilson replied. He opened up an antibacterial wipe for his hands and another to clean the wound.

“You sure Colt's gonna be okay? I read about that actress in _People_ magazine, the one who bumped her head skiing and died?”

“Lorna, I can't stay to make sure he doesn't have any bleeding inside his skull. If I'm here when he comes to, it could upset him -- "

 _And he'd shoot you for real this time_ , a little voice in the back of Wilson's head observed. He pushed the voice away.

" -- and cause him to make another bad decision. That old Bonneville out back -- does it run?”

"That's MeMaw's ... " She stopped herself, and shook her head ever so slightly before continuing.

"That's my mother's old car," she said. "Colt keeps it tuned up so's she can get back and forth to bingo night at the VFW post. I can bring it up to the front door and walk Colt to it."

“Good,” Wilson said. “That's a good plan.” He was sweating again, this time from the pain, and mopped his forehead on his shirt sleeve. His watch showed only an hour and ten minutes had passed since he'd pulled into the parking lot of the Quik Stop.

“Are you going to call the police on us?” she asked in a small voice.

Wilson's hands were shaking again; the antibacterial wipe had added a whole new level of stinging pain to his wound. Instead of answering right away, he forced himself to think of something else. The books on the floor, all of them bearing the Oprah Book Club seal on the covers.

"You read all those?" he said. Lorna glanced down.

"All of 'em," she said. "The real interesting ones, I read out loud to the kids. Colt, too, sometimes."

The stinging subsided, and Wilson squeezed out some tribiotic ointment onto his wound and covered it with a couple of gauze pads.

"I'm not going to call the cops," he said. “I promised Colt I'd find him a doctor who would treat him and help him get on disability while he recovers, and I'm going to do that.” He tore off several strips of adhesive tape and finished dressing the wound. “I need you to write down your mailing address for me so I can send you the information about the doctor for Colt.”

There was a small notepad and pen in his medical bag, and he pulled them out and handed them to her. Colt moaned a little and shifted position on the floor. She wrote quickly and handed the pad back.

“Remember what I said: take him to the hospital, even if he doesn't want to go. When you get there, tell them he slipped and fell on the driveway.”

She nodded. "If he puts up a fuss, I'll threaten to tell what he really did."

"That's good," Wilson said. He stood up slowly, testing his injured leg. It held him, but the change in elevation made him feel as if he might puke. He swallowed hard a few times, and the nausea eased.

Colt moaned again; his eyelids fluttered and he started to raise his hands. Lorna caught them in her own; she kissed the knuckles and held them against her cheek.

"It's all right, baby," she murmured.

"I'll just ... be going now," Wilson said, but she seemed not to hear. "Okay, then. I'm ... going."

Outside, he had to squint against the bright sun. Heat was rising in shimmering waves off the crushed-stone driveway, and the ugly pit bull was asleep, curled into a brindle cannon ball in the grass.

Wilson opened the door to the Volvo and tossed his medical kit inside, then slid carefully behind the steering wheel. The faint scent of Colt Locklear lingered in the car -- sweat and smoke, aftershave that smelled of the sea. He rested his forehead against the wheel for just a moment and concentrated on breathing, and after another moment he started the car and drove away.

He didn't look back.

  
[Part Three, and Epilogue](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/1326892.html)


	3. Fic:  Roll the Bones (Part Three and Epilogue)

_  
**Fic: Roll the Bones (Part Three and Epilogue)**   
_   
[Part One](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/1326458.html)   
[Part Two](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/1326797.html)

 _  
**Part Three**   
_

  
When the silver Volvo rolled to a stop outside the store's dust-streaked glass door, Wilson had been gone exactly two hours. House pushed himself up from the tattered chair by the door just in time to see Wilson exit the driver's seat, walk slowly around the back of the car and get into the passenger side. House's eyes narrowed; Wilson's gait was off-kilter, and he seemed to be favoring his left leg.

“Told you he'd be back,” the clerk said around a mouthful of barbecue potato chips.

“Gee, why don't you set up a psychic hotline?” House said sourly. He pushed open the door and walked up to the window of the Volvo.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Gave a guy a ride home,” Wilson said. The neck of his green polo shirt was dark with sweat and he looked pale, almost shocky.

“That's not what happened. You look like crap.”

“It _was_ what happened, and I'm sorry I'm offending your aesthetic sensibilities. His car wouldn't start; he has a serious back injury, and he needed to get home to take his meds and make sure his kids didn't burn the house down while he was gone. I got out at his place to open the gate and his damn dog bit me.” Wilson raised his hand to forestall the protest already forming on House's lips. “Dog's had his shots. I saw the papers from the vet. Now let's get back on the road. You're driving.”

"You could've told me where you were going."

"I thought I'd call on the way there. That was before I found out there's no cell service in a fifty mile radius. Just one more reason to get the hell out of Dodge."

"You're lying," House said, "but I'll give you a reprieve until we cross the state line."

* * *

"You're shaking," House said, without taking his eyes off the road. He didn't have to; he'd been observing Wilson for the last fifty miles. "You're also pale and your pulse is way too fast. I can see it in your neck."

"Yes, you're very impressive." Wilson rubbed his face. "You can tell I've had a bad day."

House glanced over. Along with everything else, Wilson was sitting oddly in his seat. He was practically hugging himself, arms wrapped around his torso like he was freezing, and his legs were clamped together and angled in such a way that all House could see of them were the tops of his thighs.

"I can also tell you're hiding your so-called dog bite. I want to see it."

Wilson made a face -- his lips a thin, pinched line, and pulled out his iPhone.

"You're driving," he said. "You get distracted, we both die." He poked at the phone's screen -- his hands _were_ shaking -- and began looking up something with its GPS function, now that they were in range of civilization again. "In twenty miles we'll hit Gainesville," he said. "We're stopping there for the night." He kept tapping the phone's screen, biting his lip as if this task required extreme concentration. "Exit 384 will take us to an ABC Liquors," he said, at last, "and a very nice Hilton. In that order."

"Booze before shelter? Not that I don't approve, but something reversed your usual hierarchy of needs."

"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to buy us a good bottle of Scotch. With your own money. And then you're checking us into the best suite we can get."

"Let's not get too extreme, now."

"You're also going to order food." Wilson's tone brooked no dissent, an interesting development, for him. "And I'm going to drink. A lot. And then I'm going to tell you what happened to me."

"I'll figure it out anyway." He argued for the sake of argument, because it was habit -- but he already knew he would do what Wilson asked.

"Eventually, yes. You'll even tell me the color of the dog. But because you're my best friend, you'll help me get comfy and plastered first."

"You're admitting you want to get drunk?" This was weird; with very few exceptions, Wilson liked to pretend that his occasional benders were accidental.

"Very. Drunk enough to let you clean and possibly suture the dog bite."

"You have a _suture kit_ in the trunk?"

"That surprises you?"

It did, but House supposed it shouldn't. "I'm off duty," he said. "Sew up your own mangy hide."

"I plan to be too wasted to hold the needle."

"And thus too wasted to feel the pain," House said. "Fine. But your story had better be worth the price of admission."

* * *

"No bullshit, House," Wilson said, as they rolled to a stop beneath the block-lettered ABC sign. "Real Scotch. Good Scotch. As a future lottery winner, I'm sure you can afford it." He leaned his seat back and shut his eyes, making it clear he meant to wait there for House's return. House didn't move.

"I'm not driving now," he declared. "Lemme see."

Wilson didn't open his eyes.

"House, this is a parking lot, at night. A cop comes by, sees me fumbling around with my _pants_ and you leaning over me, what's he going to think?"

"Well ... "

"No. Just ... no."

House waited another minute, but it was clear Wilson wasn't to be budged. So against every urge in his wicked, black heart, House walked in and bought precisely what Wilson demanded. His hand hovered over the rack of cheap tumblers, but then he pulled back. A Hilton should have real highball glasses, not these thick clunky things, and if they didn't he could always take a couple from the bar. He moved quickly, glancing through the ad-festooned windows every few seconds, as if the Volvo might pull another vanishing act.

When he climbed back into the driver's seat, House noticed Wilson's eyes -- wide open and unhappy. "You're in pain," House said.

"Take a right to Forty-second street," Wilson replied. "Sooner we get that room, the sooner it stops hurting."

* * *

Wilson was going to owe him for this. He had stayed stubbornly ensconced in the car while House did all the annoying crap, dealing with desk clerks and room choices, limping through a lobby full of smug conventioneers who looked at him like he was there to rob the joint. Of course, the joke was on them -- for all their flamingo-pink nametags and coconut-shaped welcoming packets, the convention attendees were relegated to the party floors, leaving House free to snag an unclaimed junior suite.

They were now pulled around the left wing of the building, directly in front of the side entrance and its elevator -- and still no movement from Barnacle Jimmy.

"You realize I can't actually beam your sorry ass up to the fourth floor, right?"

"Go on up. I'll join you in a minute."

"Ladies first."

"Don't be a dick."

"I've showed you my leg. Your turn to show me yours."

"House ... "

 _"Wilson."_

It came out sharper than House had intended, but he didn't care.

"The last time I went first -- and that would be, oh ... today? I came back out from that one-stop shop at hell's crossroads and you were gone. You were fucking _gone_." On some distant level House was aware that his voice was rising, but he plowed on. "And I had to spend two solid hours chatting with Goober Pyle -- "

"Gomer," Wilson interjected. His face was pale but remarkably composed, considering the fact that House was yelling at him. "Jim Nabors played _Gomer_ Pyle."

"And George Lindsey played his dumber-ass cousin _Goober_ ," House ground out. "Remarkably similar to the guy I was stuck with, whose idea of _stimulating conversation_ was the price of _hogs_ in the _spot market_." He paused to take a breath.

"And I didn't know where you were," he said. "I didn't know if you'd finally had enough and just abandoned my sorry ass in South Purina, Georgia. Because that's ... "

 _Because that's what I'm afraid of_ , House thought. But he didn't say it. He didn't need to. Wilson was opening his passenger-side door, although he wasn't getting out.

Wilson leaned back and closed his eyes.

"You do know," he said, "that as the one doing the driving, _you_ have the keys?"

"And do _you_ know," House replied, "that as the one who's broken into your car on more than one occasion, I know you've got a set of spare keys hidden under the glove compartment?"

The corner of Wilson's mouth twitched just a little, and that was a good sign. He opened his eyes and sat back up.

"Okay," he said. "But before you completely freak out, you need to know that ... it was an accident."

"You drove off by mistake with a guy named after a gun? What was your first clue?"

"How did you ... never mind. No, not that. What happened to my leg." He hoisted the appendage in question, wincing as the calf and foot came into House's view. In an instant House recognized the damage to the pants fabric.

"Wilson, you _idiot_." Idiot wasn't a good enough word, not by half, but the blood was busy draining from House's face, taking half his vocabulary with it. "That's a fucking bullet hole."

"I'll get the bags," Wilson said, "if you get the Scotch."

"That's a fucking _bullet hole_."

"Can we continue this fascinating discussion once I'm good and drunk?"

"We can do it once we're both good and drunk," House said. "And you are definitely getting the bags."

* * *

Gainesville wasn't lit at night the way Orlando would be. The view out the window wasn't spectacular or ugly or anything out of the ordinary at all. A rising moon -- or setting; House realized he was a little turned around and couldn't be sure -- shone low and orange just above the horizon.

The bottom of the tumbler distorted it for a moment, like a reflection on water. Twenty minutes ago, House would have said he didn't feel like getting drunk. Then he'd seen Wilson's leg.

Wilson the Ever-Prepared was drinking with one hand while arranging the suture kit on his bed with the other. "Order us something for dinner," he said. "Whatever you want; I don't care."

"Okay," House replied, "but you're going to spill the whole truth while we wait for room service to show."

Wilson merely nodded, limped back to the little dining table, and poured himself another drink.

"First of all," he said, between sips, "I'm sure you've already figured out I didn't leave you there voluntarily."

* * *

The equation was classic Wilson: alcohol in, truth out. Unsurprisingly, the truth was that Wilson was a guilt-driven moron with all the self-preservation instincts of a lemming.

However, when confronted with that fact, he retorted that if House could think of a better way to have handled the guy, he'd like to hear it.

House couldn't. All he could think of, when he thought of the scene, was the bullet veering a little higher, a little more to the right, directly into the chest. Accidental death would count just as much as the intentional kind.

"Take your pants off and lie on your stomach," he commanded. "You want me to fix the owie, I don't want your stupid khakis in the way."

* * *

House hadn't stitched anyone up while mildly intoxicated since a night during his residency, when he picked the wrong carton of orange juice out of the fridge and discovered the ER attending was well on his way to alcoholism.

Still, he was actually glad he'd had a shot of Scotch after he scooted close to the bed and got a closer look at the angry red bullet track. The gauze that had covered the wound was stained with dried blood and a greasy smear of antibiotic ointment.

“Shit,” House hissed under his breath. Wilson turned his head and peered up from under his furrowed eyebrows.

“Wha'?”

“What'd he use, a Civil War musket?”

“Pishtol. Big ... pistol. Old shiny thing. It was ... big. And old.”

“You said that already,” House said. “Put your head down. I'm going to numb you up first.”

“Don' bother,” Wilson said. “Jus' do it.”

"Just in case you kick me and I get a needle stick," House said as he snapped on a pair of gloves, "all the insinuations about me and hookers are real. Stay still, stay pure. You got it?"

Wilson giggled.

* * *

"And you're going to help him."

"Yesh." Wilson's voice was indistinct; his face was still half-buried in the pillow and his eyelids were drooping.

"Even though he almost killed you." Of course; he'd never let his sense of responsibility be dulled by something as minor as being shot. House grabbed the bottle and tumbler Wilson had left on the night table; mending Wilson's flesh had, he felt, earned him a reward -- or at least a release.

"Not on purpose. You know ... chron ... chronic pain, it makes people ... lil' crazy." He waggled a finger in House's face, then stared at the finger as if unsure where it had come from. He grunted and struggled to his elbows, twisting his shoulders and upper body in an apparent effort to look at his feet.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Wanna see ... my stishes," Wilson mumbled. " _Stitches_. See ... "

"Why? You think I cross-stitched my name down there?" He reached over and placed a hand between Wilson's shoulder blades, gently pushing him back down on his stomach. Wilson's skin was warm through the thin cotton undershirt, but it was human-warm, normal, not febrile. "It's a regular suture, trust me."

Wilson looked up at him mournfully. "Gonna miss ... miss th'first day. Of the ... conference," he announced.

"I'm sure they're not doing anything interesting," House reassured him. _Nothing besides that Doctors Without Borders presentation, and I would have spiked your coffee to keep you away from that._

Wilson's handy medical bag had also yielded up packs of ibuprofen and the mini-bar provided vastly over-priced orange juice, so House would be prepared for Wilson's inevitable morning-after hangover.

What he wasn't prepared for was lying awake listening to Wilson, who snored like an old dog, and feeling the blunted edge brought by his own drinks fade away. Before he'd detoxed in the spring, he could have ridden two or three drinks and a Vicodin booster through the whole night.

 _Scared me_ , he thought. _You were there, and then gone. Just like that._

It was a while before he fell asleep at last, and when he did, he dreamed of men in dusty blue, trudging down a dry streambed, lit by the unearthly glow of starshells overhead.

* * *

It wasn't until the sun cast a single bright beam across House's eyes the next morning that he realized he hadn't closed the curtains as tightly as he'd thought.

"Unh," he mumbled thoughtfully. He scrubbed at his eyes -- his mouth was dry and his teeth felt sticky, but his head was clear. A soft breath of warm air puffed against his left ear, and he looked around.

Well. Not only had he not closed the curtains all the way, he'd fallen asleep in Wilson's bed. He'd _meant_ to move to the other bed, but he'd stayed just a bit longer in this one -- the flatscreen TV had already been turned to the best angle, and after Wilson had fallen asleep, he'd closed his eyes for just a moment ... and now ... here he was.

He set both palms flat against the mattress and pushed himself up a little.

Wilson didn't stir. Sometime during the night he'd turned onto his side and kicked the covers off; the bandage House had wrapped around his calf to hold the sterile dressing in place acted as a stark dividing line between patella and tarsals. Wilson exhaled again, and House roused himself enough to lightly press the back of his hand against Wilson's cheek. Still no fever, which meant they were pretty much out of the woods as far as nasty secondary infections were concerned. At House's touch, Wilson mumbled something and half-opened one bleary eye. House thought for a moment of telling Wilson he had an organic chem final in ten minutes, just to see what would happen.

"Hey," House said. "How you feeling?"

Wilson squinted at him but didn't answer right away. Instead he turned slowly onto his back, and, equally slowly, covered his eyes with his forearm.

"That's what I thought," House observed. "Where'd you put the room service menu? A pot of coffee and some good grease is what you need. Coats your -- "

"House," Wilson said. He lowered his arm and blinked at the ceiling. "We're only about a hundred miles from Orlando. We can still make it to the conference and just miss the morning sessions."

House stared at him. Wilson the Responsible had chosen this moment to surface. He thought quickly.

"No," House said. "You're running a fever. It's best you stay in bed. Rest, and plenty of fluids."

Wilson stopped blinking at the ceiling and blinked at House instead.

"I don't _feel_ feverish," he said, but a note of doubt had already crept into his voice.

"Trust me," House said in his best authoritative voice. "I'm a doctor, even though I don't play one on TV."

Wilson rolled his eyes, and judging from the immediate wince that followed, reconsidered his entire plan of action.

"Well ... " he began.

"Good," House said. "Always a good idea to follow the advice of your doctor." He looked around, scanning the desk, the top of the TV, the blue-carpeted floor for the errant _Hilton Services_ notebook. "Hey, maybe they've got _menudo_ ," he said. "A sure-fire cure for hangovers -- or so I've heard."

The answering groan was the only encouragement needed for House to pick up the phone and dial room service.

* * *

“Wilson!” House shouted from the doorway, startling Wilson awake and causing his nearly-vanished hangover headache to spike again.

“If it involves money, forget it. Wilson Savings and Loan is closed today.”

“No,” House said gleefully. “You have to come down to the lobby. There's a convention of beauticians here. It's like the world's largest gathering of drag queens, only without the cross-dressing.”

“Not getting up. Everything north of my knee and south of my eye sockets hurts.”

“Your loss,” House said. “I haven't seen hair in those colors or that much eye makeup since the last Mardi Gras parade.” He flopped on the other bed and pulled a bag of salted peanuts from his jacket pocket.

Wilson picked up the packet of conference materials he'd been reading through before he dozed off. He'd been trying to concentrate on a synopsis, which House persisted in calling a cheat sheet, for the material to be covered during the oncology panel, but his mind kept wandering. He hadn't taken a day off and stayed in bed sick since his pediatric rotation, when he'd caught something from almost every vomiting or sniffling child he'd examined.

House popped a handful of peanuts into his mouth.“You're not using your laptop?” he said after a minute of quiet.

“Don't need it right now.”

“Let me borrow it. Need to check my e-mail.” There was a note of false casualness that made Wilson look over the sheaf of papers.

“And after that you'll surf for porn? Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to call in desktop support to clean up my laptop after you've checked out _Mädchen Sluts_ dot com? Go downstairs and use one of the business center's computers."

House sat up and zinged the crumpled peanut bag into the trash basket. "I tried. They're firewalled." He picked up the remote and aimed it at the television.

"Too bad." Wilson sat up a little higher and punched up his pillow before settling back down. He retrieved the sheaf of conference papers and started to read again, but soon enough he was drifting away, the sound of the TV rapidly cycling channels in his ears.

* * *

One great thing about the Hilton: the staff at the front desk didn't bat an eye at weird requests from its guests. So when House called down to ask the time and channel for the Georgia lottery drawing, he got an immediate answer.

“Starts in seven minutes on Channel 13,” the clerk said pleasantly. “Good luck, Dr. House.”

House dropped the phone on the bed and flicked the power button on the TV remote. He fast-forwarded through the channels until he reached 13. The end of _Double Indemnity_ was on, with Fred MacMurray's scheme to strike it rich through insurance fraud unraveling in crystal-clear black and white.

“Uhh,” Wilson said. He raised his head up from the pillow. “House, stop shaking the bed.”

“I'm not shaking it.” Out of the corner of his eye, House could see the movie's credits rolling at lightning-fast speed.

“You're jigging your leg. That in turn is shaking the bed, which is making my leg hurt. So stop it.”

“I could be holding a ticket to paradise and you're quibbling about me expending a little nervous energy?”

“Yes,” Wilson said and adjusted the pillow under his wounded leg. “Go sit on the other bed.”

“And now the Georgia Lottery presents tonight's drawing for Win For Life!” blared from the television's speakers.

House held up his purple and white ticket.

“Tonight's Win for Life free ball number is two. That's two, ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said and held up two fingers.

House suddenly sat straight up. “I got it!” he said excitedly.

“And our Win for Life numbers are as follows: 3, 7, 19 ... ”

“C'mon twenty-three,” House muttered.

“Twenty-three,” the announcer said and House thrust his fist into the air in victory.

“And the final two numbers are twenty-four and thirty-nine,” the announcer said, and House's arm came down. If it was possible for a limb to look dejected, House's did.

Wilson pushed up on his elbows. “You lost?”

“Won six hundred bucks,” House said. He stabbed the channel button on the remote and the Weather Channel's bright graphics suddenly filled the screen.

“And you're sad about that?”

“I was this close to a thousand bucks a week for life.”

“My cut of your winnings is $240, remember? We're going to split it sixty-forty. Which was supposed to pay my malpractice insurance for a year, House.”

House turned around. “Those rejects from the cast of _Deliverance_ you've been playing doctor with didn't care if you had insurance.”

Wilson kept his eyes on the television screen. Tomorrow's forecast was mild and sunny. “It wasn't like that, House. He needed help. It was definitely an unconventional way of getting it, but it worked.”

Even from three feet away, Wilson didn't miss the first hint of an evil glint in House's eye.

“C'mon, Jimmy,” he said in a syrup-thick drawl. “Anybody out there make you squeal like a pig?”

“Believe it or not, they weren't that kind of people, House.”

"No guys named Bubba? No _girls_ named Bubba?"

"House ... "

"Did you meet Boo Radley?"

"House, I met a woman who's reading a book by Sidney Poitier."

"You're no fun. You could at least have come back with a banjo in the trunk. Or on your knee."

"And wake up to your playing the damn thing at six in the morning? No, thanks."

"Seriously. No fun at all."

"Which is why you missed me so much."

"Shut up."

Wilson did, but he was smiling.

* * *

"I knew it," House said. He shut the door to Wilson's office behind him, cutting off the busy ambient noise of the hospital hallway. "Don't tell me you're going through with this."

"I made a promise, House," Wilson said mildly.

"A promise made under duress isn't a promise," House sniped.

Wilson ignored him and looked instead at the white FedEx shipping package open on his desk. It was almost ready to go. He picked up the brown envelope with its cargo of disability and workers' comp forms, detailed directions to the doctor's office, and Wilson's own written evaluation of Colt Locklear's injury.

"So who else did you manage to rope into this?"

"Why do you care? Y'know, since you obviously don't want to have anything to do with this."

"I don't. Care, that is. I'm just curious who else is gullible enough to sign off on this hillbilly soap opera. _Y'know_ , for the next time when a guy with a gun _kills_ the good Samaritan, I can just switch over to a new best friend immediately."

Wilson sighed. "There'll be no _next time_ , House. And if you want Tate Bascombe for your new best friend, I'm afraid you'll have to move to Valdosta, Georgia."

"He's an onion?"

"Valdosta grows peaches. The onions are Vidalia."

"So he's a fruit instead of a bulb. Perfect."

"He's an orthopedic surgeon, qualified for worker's comp cases." Wilson placed the envelope in the FedEx box, laying it on top of the small packs of NicoDerm CQ patches meant for Lorna. He could feel House's eyes on him.

"And?"

"And ... we were roommates. Twice. Once at McGill, then at Penn. We keep in touch."

House made a honking sound that might have been a crow of triumph.

"Ha! See? You had to cash in some chips to -- "

Much to Wilson's relief, House's pager chose that moment to go off. House glanced at the tiny screen, then levered himself out of his chair.

"Gotta go," he said. "Patient's oozing again." He exited Wilson's office, his mind obviously already elsewhere.

Wilson watched him go, then pushed back from his desk a little in order to slide open a bottom drawer. The pink teddy bear he'd picked up that morning from the hospital gift shop smiled up at him; he lifted it out and sat it down on the desk, absently smoothing its ruffled fur with one hand. His ears burned a little as he imagined House's mocking laughter.

"All right," he said, even though there was no one to hear.

He nestled the bear in with the envelope and the nicotine replacement patches, then took the colorful tissue paper provided by the gift shop and arranged the crinkly folds around and on top of the contents. He leaned on his palms and inspected the result.

It wasn't nearly enough, but it would have to do.

  
_  
**~~~ Epilogue ~~~**   
_   


He'd been in the yard, pouring yet more oil into the old Chevy's motor -- the thing burnt a half quart a week -- when he heard something comin' up the road. Bobo heard it too, lifting his head and sniffing warily at the air.

Colt stiffened up, straightening his back the best he could while he wiped the dirt and oil off his hands, then set the rag down on the engine. Not many people drove out this way, it being a dead end and all, and this didn't sound like anyone's car that he knew.

He'd been waiting for the cops to come get him for a week now, ever since he woke up in the back of MeMaw's car with his head hurting worse than his back, and Lorna all pale and sweaty, telling him he'd shot that doctor in the leg, and if he ever did a damn fool thing like that again she'd kill him herself. At the time he hadn't thought to point out that he _wouldn't_ of shot the doctor in the leg if she hadn't whacked him with that damn skillet, and afterwards it didn't seem worth bringing up. Hell, those first few days he'd been so messed up he was half-afraid he'd look up at the TV one day and see his wife there, sittin' next to those chitter-chatter _View_ women, explaining how she'd laid her husband out cold for not bringin' home the right brand of cigarettes.

Lorna didn't believe the doctor was gonna press charges, but Lorna wasn't the one who got shot, either. Every time he heard something on the road, he got all tensed up until he knew who it was, and he was getting tired of it. He was starting to want to just get it over with -- so he was kinda let down when he saw that it was FedEx, and not the Federales.

The truck chuffed to a stop, the dull roar of its idling engine competing with the ruckus Bobo had set up. The dog had stretched himself to the last link in his tie-out chain and was spinning around like one of those Dervish people Colt had seen on a National Geographic special that Lorna had made him watch, barking and howling like somebody'd stuck a firecracker up his butt.

"Bo!" Colt said. "Hush up now."

The pit bull stopped whirling and settled back on his haunches. A big pink tongue lolled out and he hiccuped. Colt swiped away the sweat that was already beading up again on his forehead; he'd missed a slick of grease on the inside of his right wrist, but the rag was back at the car and it was too late now. The hell was FedEx comin' out here for, anyway? Lorna only ever bought books through the mail, and she wasn't the kind to throw money away just to get things a little bit faster. _Except I'm probably payin' for it_ , he thought, while he trudged through the dust cloud the truck had kicked up. _She's still pissed at me, and this is --_

"You Colt Locklear?" the FedEx driver said.

"That's me," Colt said.

"Need you to sign for this," the driver said. Colt took the electronic keypad slate and scrawled his name on the screen. The package seemed kinda big for a book; maybe Lorna'd bought a whole set of 'em. Got herself hooked up for the next six months of the Oprah Club. But the second he took hold of the delivery, Colt knew that wasn't it. Books were heavy, and slid around in the box, and this ... had a return address from New Jersey.

It was from Doctor James Wilson.

"Sweet Jesus God," said Colt. He looked up to tell the FedEx driver thanks, but the truck was already in reverse, backing out of the drive. He pulled his knife from his back pocket and slit the tape, and the cut was crooked because he was all shook up, and for all he knew there was a letter from a lawyer in there, or a subpoena, but that -- wouldn't come wrapped in pretty pink tissue paper, would it?

He pulled out the soft little bear and realized he was smiling so big it made his face hurt.

The trailer door slapped open. "Colt!" Lorna called out. "Colt, come on back in. Travis cut his finger takin' apart your old chainsaw and Dale's gone and spit up all her mashed peas. I've only got two hands here."

The bear had been guarding a big brown envelope, an envelope that someone had written _REFERRALS/WORKERS COMP_ on with a blue ballpoint pen. There were other things in there too, hiding beneath the envelope of papers that would save his life.

"Sweet Jesus God," Colt said again. "He actually did it." He was starting to feel numb all over, but tingly at the same time. Bobo, seeming to sense something in the air, clambered to his feet and started wagging his stumpy little tail. Colt tore his attention away from the FedEx package and looked around. Lorna had gone back inside, presumably to separate their son from the chainsaw. He took a slow step forward, then another, and then he was running for the double-wide with Bobo yipping at his heels, the leash-chain sliding through the grass like a long silver snake. He yanked open the storm door.

"Honey?" Colt shouted. "Lorna? Honey?"

The storm door rattled shut behind him; Lorna was there, staring at him, concern and curiosity in her dark eyes. Outside, Bobo set up a new round of barking.

"Colt?" she said. "Babe, are you all right?"

He thrust the FedEx box at her as he fought to catch his breath. The pain in his back, momentarily forgotten in the rush of excitement, flared up again, and he grabbed at the back of the Barcalounger with his free hand.

"Lorna," he gasped out. "Look at this!"

She glanced at the box and then looked again, her eyes going wide.

"Colt," she breathed. "Is this -- "

"It is," Colt said, and damn if his grin hadn't just gotten bigger, even despite the pain.

"Mama?" It was Britney, eying both her parents with what appeared to be some worry. "Is everthing okay?"

Colt grinned at his wife and daughter; something crashed to the floor in the next room and baby Dale commenced to wail.

"Everything's just fine," he assured his family. He looked at Lorna again, and she was smiling. Colt let go of the lounger and straightened up as tall as he could. "We just won the God-damn lottery!"

 _"Colt!"_ Lorna shushed. "How many times do I have to tell you not to use those kinds of words in front of the kids?" And then _she_ grinned, too, and pulled him close, the FedEx package squashed between them. Her breath was warm on his right ear as she spoke over his shoulder.

"What your daddy _meant_ to say," she began, and then leaned back just enough to look Colt in the eyes, "was that Christmas came a little bit early this year."

Colt hauled her back in and hugged her tight, because it _was_ the truth, after all.

  
~ fin

  
 _Well, I don't know, but I been told --  
You never slow down, you never grow old._  
~ From "Mary Jane's Last Dance," 1993, words and music by Tom Petty


End file.
